David "Red" Lindsay walks into the Walter Reed Convalescent Center like a man who knows where he's going. Which he does. For the past four years, the place has been home to the most important man in his world.

"See that lady in the striped shirt on the couch?" he asks as he strolls through the lobby. "You wait, she'll start waving like crazy when she sees me."

Sure enough, she does.

Lindsay heads down the hallway, waving and shaking hands like a candidate, until he reaches room B8. "Hey, Pop!" he says, as the white-haired man in the bed looks up.

It's a nice, clean room. Black-and-white pictures from the man's youth, wearing his baseball uniform, are placed beside the bed. School portraits of his grandchildren, who call him Pa-Daddy, are on the wall.

And "SportsCenter" is on the TV — Red had turned it on 12 hours earlier during his morning visit.

Does he know who I am? You ask yourself this when someone you love has Alzheimer's. It's been at least two years since Red had an actual conversation with his father, a man who used to talk for hours with a complete stranger. Sometimes, the expressions are blank. Every now and then, you see a sparkle.

Dennis Lindsay, who turned 70 on March 11, does seem to recognize the skinny guy with red hair as someone very dear to him. And for Red — Dennis gave him the nickname when he was 3 or 4 — that's good enough.

"I think he knows who I am," Red says as he feeds Dennis dinner. "And he loves when his grandchildren come see him."

After the applesauce is polished off, Red says goodbye to his Pop and heads home to his wife, Kathryn, and children, Brett, 10, and Brooke, 4. In about 12 hours, he'll be back.

'It was chaos'Aside from his family and closest of friends, no one knew what Red Lindsay was going through in late 2005 and early '06. As much as his Pop loved being the center of attention, Red, in his 16th year as Gloucester's softball coach, has never craved it. And the last thing he wanted was sympathy.

As the fall arrived, Dennis' dementia was getting worse. Red's mother, Pat, was having her own health issues. Her muscles had become weak, and eventually she was unable to walk.

With his Pop, the doctors knew what was wrong. With Mom, they had no idea. From expert to expert, from hospital to hospital, they searched for answers.

On Dec. 11, Kathryn gave birth to their second child. Brooke was healthy and, by an amazing coincidence, checked in at the exact time as Brett — 8:55 a.m.

On the 13th, Kathryn and Brooke came home from the hospital. But three days later, Red received a message at school. It said, simply, "Get home now."

Kathryn's temperature had climbed to 104.5 degrees. She was rushed to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a staph infection. Her doctors told her she might have developed serious health problems had she ignored the symptoms.

So at this point, Red Lindsay has a father with dementia, a mother with who knows what, and a wife hospitalized with a staph infection. Plus a newborn, a 5-year-old, and his job as a physical-education instructor at Peasley Middle School. He stayed with his Pop at night and juggled everything else during the day.

"It was chaos," he says. "Kathryn's parents were awesome. I'd have been lost without them."

He also had his older brother, Michael, helping out with the financial matters. He lives in Northern Virginia.

Kathryn came home on Dec. 21. But two days later, Pat was back in the hospital — and her doctors still didn't know what the problem was.

In January, she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, which affects the peripheral nervous system. It's a leading cause of paralysis not related to trauma. She was put under heavy sedation.

Right around the same time, Dennis checked into Walter Reed. You know the horror stories about the elderly throwing fits when put in a convalescent center? Not Dennis.

"He was as happy as could be," Red says. "He got to walk around. He got to meet people. He took over the place immediately."

In early February, Red got a call from the hospital. After a month of sleeping from the sedation, his mother had awakened.

In May, Pat entered a rehab center and was able to come see a Gloucester softball game. Soon, she came home for good.

Life has evened out. Pat, 70, is healthy and living on her own. She comes to all the home games and some on the road. As for Dennis, well, Alzheimer's only gets worse. But he's not suffering, and the WRCC staff, Red says, "treats him like gold."

And there's coaching. During all the chaos, Red had seriously considered giving it up to focus on his family. It was Pat who talked him out of it.

"It's such an important part of his life," she says. "And it's more important for him to do that than to come see me and his dad. He's very good at it, and I'm very proud of him for that."

They called him 'Coach'Dennis Lindsay had, his wife said, "an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball." Ask any trivia question, and he would have the answer — or at least something that sounded right. His nickname at the Anheuser-Busch brewery, where he worked, was "Coach."

He played baseball at York High (Class of '58) and for Poquoson-York Post 273. He was an infielder, most likely a scrappy one. He coached Pony League and Little League.

He's been a Yankee fan practically since birth. And he taught Red the game.

"My good habits and my bad," Red says. "When I was growing up, he told me to pull everything, pull everything. Don't hit it to right field; that's no good. Then when I got older, I figured it out that I needed to hit it where it was pitched."

Red played for Menchville (Class of '86), where he was mostly an infielder. He played for Christopher Newport and was a career .306 hitter. He found other ways to get on base: In his four-year career, he was hit by a pitch 39 times. That was an NCAA Division III record at the time.

Lindsay's 15-year run as Gloucester's softball coach has been remarkable. The Dukes' record over that span is 238-80 for a winning percentage of .748 — even better than his beloved Yankees last year.

Gloucester has won six regular-season championships (two were shared) and three tournament titles. The Dukes have made the Eastern Regional six times, including four in the last five years.

He is well-respected in the PD.

"I've known Red since he (played) at Menchville," Woodside coach Mike Tallon said. "A fiercer competitor there never was. He has a sincere old-school passion for the game and how it is played."

One of Tallon's best players, shortstop Kristie Hoeffer, transferred to Gloucester last summer. Some wondered if it would create strife between the coaches, but it clearly hasn't.

"When (Hoeffer's family) moved to Gloucester, I told them there was no one else I would rather have Kristie play for," Tallon said. "I hope that gives you an idea of the respect I have for him as a person and a coach."

Before his dementia set in, Dennis was a fixture at the games. And the practices, for that matter. And while he loved to watch the game, he loved to talk about it just as much.

"He'd come by my office every day, almost," Gloucester athletic director Jon Hatch said. "He was a big Bobby Knight fan, so we'd argue about him. I like Bobby Knight, too, but I'd stick a needle in him and say, 'Well, Dean Smith did this.' Dennis is a dear friend of mine."

It's been five years since Dennis came to a Gloucester softball game, but he's always there. He's with Pat in the stands, and he's with Red on the field. Red usually scribbles messages on his shoes. One day, it was "Miss you, Pop" on one shoe and "Wish you were here" on the other.

"He'd drive you nuts sometimes," Red laughs. "But I wish he could come to one more game."